Teaching and learning with case studies: A multicultural perspective

Case studies have been used for teaching business students both at the graduate and undergraduate level. Academia and industry have found that use of case studies have been effective in shortening the learning curve for preparing the students for industry jobs. Most of the case studies are developed based on real business experiences and provide facts and situations that illustrate one or more business discipline related decisions. The students usually work in teams and analyze through different ways of role playing, debates, simulated board room discussions etc. This paper is based on a study of how graduate students learn and gain benefits from the use of case studies in class rooms. The study involves an observation and assessment of students' learning in a MBA program in the US and a graduate program in Japan. Students' experiences and assessment is collected on whether the use of case studies is a better way of teaching interpersonal skills, teaming skills, problem solving skills and management skills, improves class, provides students with a good means of applying principles to real world situations, provides students with a good opportunity to synthesize; that is, identifying potential solutions to a case problem and choosing the most appropriate solution etc. The study is currently underway and results will be available in a few weeks' time. The authors will submit a complete paper to this conference based on data gathered from the two groups of students in the US and Japan. Findings addressing the cultural perspectives will also be reported.